Is engineering doomed?

13/04/2017

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Engineering is becoming passé due to a paradigm shift in student’s career choices

By Jaideep Gupta, Founder and CEO, Univariety

Engineering is fighting a losing battle and here’s why - falling demands in the US have caused IT companies in India to go easy on the campus hiring, leaving a big change in corporate dynamic and a scarcity of jobs for fresh graduates. Added to this, India saw a decreasing percentage of students opting for engineering for the past two years and this time, it has hit an all-time low with 48% of the seats being vacant, forcing institutes to shut shop as they are unable to sustain themselves and IIT’s to reconsider their course offerings.

Additionally, lesser students are opting for engineering due to the serious concerns over H-1B visa for software engineers as it is adding to the lack of jobs. The US is planning to squeeze the inflow of H1B visa holders, who are mostly sent to work by leading IT companies such as Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS), Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd. With fewer technology companies coming to campuses, placement cells have now started inviting non-IT companies as well this year to firefight the placement crunch.

The ex-Union HRD Minister, Smriti Irani had reportedly said in December 2015, that across India more than 8 lakh seats remained vacant in engineering colleges in 2015-16. And this number remains status quo in 2016-17. In the five southern states alone, more than 2 lakh engineering seats lie vacant for the academic year (2015-16) and 2.5 lakh in 2016-17.

We observe student choices across hundreds of schools in India. Engineering has been steadily declining. The demand for business management, design and economics streams is much higher now. Fewer engineers are fine as long as the skills and employability of each successive batch continually improves.

A recent study done by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) confirms that only 40% of the engineering graduates are actually employable. And the question is that out of this pool, how many of them actually get the jobs in the market, this is debatable.

Prakash Javadekar, the current Minister of HRD suggested a remedial plan to battle this situation and stated that the AICTE has decided to introduce ‘summer internships’ for at least 75 per cent of the students and introduce updated model curriculum which aims at getting engineering students ‘industry ready’ and increasing employability percentage to 60. While this is more promising, the fact to consider here is that jobs in the market for engineering graduates are much fewer in comparison to the number of seats available each year.

According to the details provided by the minister, the number of approved engineering colleges in the country for the academic year 2016-17 was 8,409; their approved intake was 31.72 lakh students. The bigger question is; are there 31.72 lakh jobs available for students who would graduate 4 years down the line?

With engineering seeing a lull, parents and students are compelled to consider other essential fields of science which were previously not as popular. Students from the PCM background are now considering career options in maths, statistics, physics or electronics as Bachelors of Science.

Similarly, those who wish to change their field of study entirely are now focusing on alternative new career options like business marketing, economics, mass communication and journalism.